This invention relates to a method of guiding design and manufacturing choices and, in particular, relates to a method of providing producibility information to a user during a product design process.
Continual evaluation of the producibility of an evolving design is useful in quickly reaching markets with high quality and affordable products. Designers may be faced with design decisions requiring specialized knowledge outside their areas of expertise that have major impact on producibility as measured by cost, quality and/or cycle time. Tradeoffs between interacting and conflicting design choices often must be made by the designer. Accordingly, there is a perceived need to provide the designer with producibility information during the product design process.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention is directed to a method for providing producibility information to a user during a design process. The method includes providing a process capability model and providing a producibility evaluation worksheet having at least one input and at least one output. The user may alter the input to represent a specific design. The process capability model is used to determine a producibility measure indicating an effect of the input on the output. The producibility measure is then displayed to the user.